Work hard, live simply, save money, research your butt off, and just do it!

If you didn’t know already, I do a combination of #8 & #9. I don’t really recommend #8 to many people, however, so I’ll dish out a few tips for #9.

1. Quit making excuses & sacrifice a little.

How does this tie into traveling? Well, count how many times you have said, or heard someone else say, “I don’t have any time to do that” or “I wish I could afford that.” Funny thing is, with a bit of sacrifice, many people could have the time or money to travel & fish.

How much TV do you watch in a week? Knock a few hours from that to get caught up on nagging chores or assignments. Or research potential travel deals online. Or start a side-gig to make a few extra bucks.

Speaking of TV, do you have cable? Get rid of that money-pit. Our cable bill was over $80/month. Times that by 12 months = $960/year. That’s real cash right there.

There’s lots of other ways to save some cash: cut down on takeout; grow your own veggies; walk, ride a bike or take public transit. It all adds up. Google is your friend on this.

My little life motto is this: Live Simply. Fish Hard. Have Fun. It’s amazing what you can do with that.

2. The internet is your friend.

Sense a recurring theme? The internet is truly your friend when it comes to finding travel deals.

(Side note: I’m from Canada, where we essentially have a monopoly on air travel: Air Canada. If you book a ticket with them, they immediately send Bruno & Gino to your house to grab you by the ankles and shake you upside down until ALL of your money falls out. You fine Americanos have Southwest Airlines, which permits you to fly anywhere through the USA for approximately $7, from what I can tell. So suck it up a little bit. I kid, I kid…sort of…)

Ok…got that part? Now it’s time to dive a little deeper into this whole internet thing…ready?

There is a not-so-secret internet society called Travel Hacking. Start there.

To put it into real numbers, in less than 12 months, doing a really half-ass job as a travel hacker, I’ve managed to hoard up over 100,000 frequent flyer miles. That total doesn’t include what I collected flying; add those miles, it’s up to 140K.

There are some folks that get five or ten times that amount in the span of a year.

Alright, I’m not going to hold everyone’s hand through this. Turn off the TV and hit the inter-tubes.

Pack light. I’m not kidding you. Some people use the “take half your stuff & double the money” rule, but we’re trying to keep this on a budget, right?

Use the internet. Remember? It is your friend.

Pack a Mooseknuckle Lanyard (sorry, had to 🙂 )

4. Keep your wits, an open mind & a positive attitude.

Trust me, s**t happens. All the time.

It could be minor, like a slight delay on a layover.

It could be moderate, like having an officer of the National Security Force of Burkina Faso pocket your passport & hand you a signed slip of paper with a dollar amount, in CIFA’s, written on it, and not having your passport in a weird & exotic place for four days, until he is paid & returns it.

It could be major, like a hurricane hitting your destination.

All you can do is keep your smarts about you, figure s**t out, and move on.

Because, trust me, those are the parts of the story you’ll tell, laugh about, and remember forever.

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These are just a few tips & pointers to get you thinking about hitting the road (or air). I could write a 500-page book on this stuff, so this is very much the very top of the tip of the iceberg. So do your own research. And have fun.